Sitting in the passenger seat, Cpl. James West of the Hampton Police Department rolled down the window and whipped out his badge. Another officer sat in the back. "We're just riding through the neighborhood," West said.

The guy's eyes widened.

"OK, y'all have a real nice day," he said, and headed back inside.

"That backed him up real quick, didn't it," said Rick Washington of the city's Codes Compliance department. We all laughed.

That was about as eventful a Friday morning as this search for homes with code violations would be.

Why?

Because the neighborhood that fell on hard times beginning in the 1960s, years after being known for its beach resort and amusement park, is slowly creeping up again -- block by block, house by house.

The ride-along was with Buckroe's District Area Resource Team, or DART. The team is made up of neighborhood residents and representatives from different city departments.

Assistant City Manager Pete Peterson, Jim Wilson of Parks and Recreation, Chip McErlean of Codes Compliance and Karla Triggle of the neighborhood office rode along, too. The group meets twice a month to scour some of Buckroe's estimated 6,000 homes. Problem property owners are contacted and cited, or taken to court.

Buckroe is a mix of mainly modest bungalows, mobile home parks and pricey waterfront properties. But too many homeowners who don't keep their properties up have made the area like Skid Row -- complete with prostitutes, drug dealers and crack and methadone addicts. Particularly guilty are the slumlords that take advantage of people who are down on their luck or who have poor credit and won't risk ending up on the street for complaining.

So sure, along the route we still saw blight: Rusty mobile homes. Roofs with gaping holes or patched with plywood. Yards with knee-high weeds. Trash on lawns and cars with expired tags parked in driveways.

But throughout the ride I heard, "Hey, they've really cleaned up," a lot more than, "Hey, look at that violation over there."

"Two years ago you couldn't see any of those houses because of the weeds," said Amy Hobbs, the neighborhood's commissioner, as we passed houses on Seaboard Avenue. She joined DART in 2003.

"There use to be homeless people living in there in tents," said Hobbs, pointing to a vacant lot along First Street that is targeted for development in the city's master plan for the area.

However, a drive through the Buckroe Trailer Court revealed blight was coming back. A stove on the lawn with duct tape wrapped around it. A half dozen old cars parked without current license plates. Good thing the location is the proposed site for a new school.

Hobbs, who is also president of the Buckroe Civic Association, pointed to a house that use to be a crack cocaine headquarters and a corner where a tree was cut down that once shaded drug deals. Both were eliminated because residents fought back despite the risks.

I saw that passion in Joann Ingram, a Civic Association member who lives on Fifth Street and showed a keen eye for repeat violators. We passed a home on her block that had building materials stacked in the back yard. The materials had been in the front too.

"It brings down the property values of all the houses around it," said Ingram, who built her home with her husband in 1998.

At the end of the ride-along Hobbs was surprised she listed only 27 problem homes. The list is usually 50 to 60.

Wil LaVeist can be reached at 247- 7840 or by e-mail at wlaveist@dailypress.com. *